New owner for Co-operative Poultry Products

Irish processor, Co-operative Poultry Products, Cootehill, which closed last October, has been bought from the liquidator for an undisclosed sum by Lyntop and its sole shareholder Zahid Hussain.

Mr Hussain told Poultry World that the Co Cavan company will re-employ many of the 90 former employees and 100 others indirectly. He is contacting suppliers and growers and expects that processing will begin by March and rise to former levels of 180,000-200,000 birds per week during the first year.

“We will be exporting the vast majority of our product to the Halal market. We have very good contacts already,” he said.

Mr Hussain was involved in the Cappoquin poultry business, acquired in 2008. He is also a director of Derby Poultry Ltd, which was newly incorporated in August 2012, the same month that Cappoquin Poultry Ltd and Cappoquin Poultry Holdings Ltd were put into examinership by creditors owed almost €6m (£5.05m).

“Growers are worried,” said Irish Farmers Association poultry committee chairman Alo Mohan. Apart from the uncertainty around companies closing and reopening, margins were very tight, he said. “There are a lot of growers who are in dire straits,” he said.

Derby Poultry, in a previous entity, had as one of its directors Perwaiz Latif, who was also an investor and director in Cappoquin, along with Irishman Thomas Vaughan. These two are not shareholders in the new Lyntop company.